Meghan Markle has declined to comment on President Donald Trump’s rampage on America after being asked about him in a new interview after a years-long war of words between the US leader and the Sussexes
Meghan Markle has refused to speak out on President Donald Trump’s latest actions, after a years-long war of words between the US leader and the Sussexes.
In an interview on The Circuit YouTube show, host Emily Chang quizzed Meghan, who comes from Los Angeles, about the recent riots between locals and ICE agents, after tough immigration laws came into effect.
Chang recalled Meghan’s interview on The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore in 2016, when the Duchess was still working as an actress before she met Prince Harry, and spoke about her “choice words” she had for Trump at the time.
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During the 2016 interview, Meghan called Trump “divisive and misogynistic”, before she explained: “You don’t really want that kind of world.” Emily asked Meghan about the comments, saying: “Are there things you’re dying to say or do right now but you feel like you can’t?”
Meghan deflected the question as she responded: “No, I just make a choice of what matters to me and what’s important to me. And that was a different time in 2016 certainly. I think if there’s anything I wanted to say or that felt necessary to say, then I would say it, but that’s not where I’m at right now. I haven’t said anything [political] since 2016, which was well before I met my husband too.”
The podcast host continued to push as she said: “We are living in such a charged time and it seems like no one is speaking up, because it’s scary to speak up. What do you think of the direction our country is going in?
Meghan conceded and answered: “I think right now it’s a really interesting time for the entire world. I just hope people are able to maintain the values that they feel are important to them and to feel safe and to remember our humanity with each other through all of it.
“However polarised the world can feel, you just go back to the fact that we are all human beings and try to find a way to connect rather than divide.”
The war of words between President Trump and the Sussexes has been going on for several years. When Harry and Meghan moved from Canada to California in 2020 after they fled the UK, there was mounting speculation over who would foot the bill for their private security.
Trump was adamant it would not be the US government. He tweeted in March 2020: “I am a great friend and admirer of the Queen & the United Kingdom. It was reported that Harry and Meghan, who left the Kingdom, would reside permanently in Canada. Now they have left Canada for the U.S. however, the U.S. will not pay for their security protection. They must pay!” It was later clarified that the couple had no intention of asking for security from the government and would foot the bill themselves.
Shortly after Harry and Meghan moved to California, Trump was up for reelection at the end of his first term in office and went head-to-head with current President Joe Biden. During the campaign, the Sussexes appeared in a video urging Americans to ‘vote against hate speech’.
While they did not specifically mention anyone by name, the remarks were interpreted as referring to Trump and therefore an endorsement of Biden, with some claiming it was a breach of the Sandringham Summit agreement, which was written up when the couple quit their royal duties in 2020. Later Trump spoke out saying he was “no fan” of Meghan and added: “I wish a lot of luck to Harry, he’s going to need it.”
In recent months, Harry found himself in the centre of a row over his visa, which allows him to live in California. After admitting to using marijuana, cocaine and psychedelic mushrooms in his controversial memoir Spare, a lawsuit from the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation argued that the US Government should release records about the Duke’s US visa application to show whether his drug use was disclosed.
Before a ruling was made in the case, Trump raged at the Biden administration for maintaining the privacy of Harry’s immigration application in order to “protect Harry.”
Days later Trump was also challenged on Harry during an interview with Nigel Farage on GB News. Farage asked if there would be any “special privileges” for the prince, and the Republican candidate said: “No. We’ll have to see if they know something about the drugs, and if he lied they’ll have to take appropriate action.”
However, in February of this year, Trump clarified he would not be taking action against Harry saying he had “enough problems with his wife” and branding her terrible.
In the last few weeks, Trump spoke out about the Royal Family on a trip to Scotland,, with King Charles set to host him on a state visit in the coming weeks.
He said: “Being with Charles, Camilla and everybody, I’ve got to know a lot of the family members. They are great people. They are really great people.”
However, he followed up with: “And in that sense, I think the UK is very lucky, you could have people that weren’t great people. I don’t know if I can say that, but you could have people that weren’t.” And to some on social media, they took his words as “calling out” Harry and Meghan.